Living Lab -"Where we learn, experiment & research; testing & creating new ideas & ways of living"

 Phase IV: The Living Lab (2026)

Active Experimentation & Co-Design

April 2026: Publication of Our Blue Home in Marlborough Online

Flash Floods in Wellington

Cyclone Vaianu moves across the country.

March 2026: The Identity Anchor Living Lab project

The Power of Stepping Back Living Lab project

Building relationships, skills and knowledge, including with tech and innovators and with Emergency Management locally in Marlborough and Nationally.

January 2026: Bluewater Endeavours Living Lab first project proposed for Marlborough. (This is a locally-led, place-based, One Health Resilience Living Lab project, developed by local Marlborough resident, Deborah Early (MMedScPhD). She proposed, for Marlborough, a living lab approach - real people finding real solutions in the real world as she noticed siloed work. Siloed approaches erode social cohesion by restricting information flow, fostering an "us versus them" mentality and reducing trust between groups. By isolating teams or communities, they limit collaboration, create misaligned goals and hinder collective action to solve shared problems. This resilience and living lab work builds on an education, research-design and advisory initiative, Bluewater Endeavours, which Deborah started in 2023 and which launched on International Women's Day in 2024.

As an example she subsequently co-created Bluewater Endeavours Living Lab (BELL) projects which are locally-led, place-based Living Lab projects.

With a background as a writer, author and educator she sought to share adaptation, resilience and place attachment insights and evidence-based expertise nationally and internationally. Further informed by her 2024 Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) marine studies, 2025 Lincoln University PGCert. Parks, Rec. & Tourism research and drawing on the quintuple helix (Public, Private, Professionals, People, Place), as well as insights from Regenerate Christchurch, this initiative has expanded to include others in her local community wanting to co-create their own resilient future.

Phase III: The Momentum Phase (2025)

Scaling through Collaboration

1 November 2025- 31 January 2026: Deborah Early selected as one of fifty attendees, and the only one from Oceania, for a special IOC-UNESCO Ocean "Summer School" training.

20th November 2025: Aspects of the One Health and Blue Tourism disaster risk reduction postgraduate research report below were presented to the Marlborough Community at Te Au Pūngao 

10 October 2025: To coincide with the 8th International Adaptation Futures Conference (AF2025) in Ōtautahi Christchurch, New Zealand, the Postgraduate Studies report below was released to stimulate action following the 2021, 2022 and 2025 severe weather events in Marlborough.  Adaptation Futures is the flagship event of the World Adaptation Science Program (WASP).

2025: April Earth Day with Marlborough Art Society

May with Marlborough (Marine) Biodiversity Forum

July with He Tai Pari | The Rising Tide with NZMSS

More severe weather events in Marlborough.

Seaweek - 10 March 2025: Notification received for completion of 2024 NZ Marine Conservation studies with NMIT.

Phase II: The Launch & Theory (2023–2024)

From Advisory to Action

2024: Earth Day with The Art of Nature and Arts in Health 

Also that year in conversation with internationally acknowledged marine scientist, the late Dr Wallace J Nichols.

International presentations on green-blue urban design.

2023 Bluewater Endeavours founded (an education and advisory initiative)

International research into social prescribing (including green-blue prescriptions and nature-based urban design.

  From the Emerald Isle to the Blue Pacific Continent, (2023) in Blue Mind, Journal of Biophilic Design (6th ed.) (UK)

Joined the first Ngā Niho Taniwha Wānanga organized by Recreation Aotearoa.

Cyclone Gabrielle, North Island.

Phase I: The Foundational Years (1995–2022)

Building Expertise through Exploration

For nearly three decades, the foundation of our work was laid across the world’s oceans. As an "Explorer of Oceans," this period was dedicated to understanding the complex relationship between land, marine environments and human health.

2021 and 2022: Severe Weather events in Marlborough.

1989-2020:  Exploring the Pacific, Atlantic & Indian Oceans, the Mediterranean Sea, Lake Erie, Lake Baikal & Wivenhoe Dam. 

Six years witnessing the magnificent mass migration along the Benguela current.

If you'd like to be involved, please contact us.

Credits to Photos Below: All are our own.